Mitchell Co. to Benefit from New Power Plant

Mitchell Co. to Benefit from New Power Plant

Mitchell County -- Here lately, Mitchell County has received a lot of good news. Not only are they excited about the potential the Cline Shale could offer their county, growing interest over that shale play was one of several reasons Houston-based power generation firm FGE Power chose Mitchell County to be home to a new 726 MW natural gas power plant.

"What you look for is gas, transmission and a market that needs power and we obviously have all three of those in Mitchell County," said Ross McCausland, CEO of Protos Energy Advisory.

FGE Power announced it's plans to build the natural gas power plant outside of Westbrook in the western part of the county earlier this week. They say construction will begin later this year, and once complete, FGE says the high efficiency, low emissions gas plant will be used for two things.

"One, it will be high responsive to back up and firm wind power in the area and two, it will be a clean, affordable, low cost supply for our major metro areas in this area and also Dallas and Houston," explained FGE Power CEO Emerson Farrell.

Once operational, not only will the plant help power the state, it also help power Mitchell county's economy.

"For one thing, it's going to provide tax revenue for us," said Mitchell Co. Judge Ray Mayo. "It's going to be valued at about half a billion dollars, which I'm sure will benefit our tax rates."

Entities like the hospital district, who will no doubt benefit, couldn't be more excited. "It's definitely going to generate revenues for us," said Bobbie Banks, Mitchell County Hospital trustee.

But the benefits don't end there. FGE says they expect to create 400 jobs during the construction phase and 20 permanent jobs once it's all complete. Construction is slated to begin sometime in August or September. The plant should be fully operational in 2016.